Today, Microsoft launches its anti-malware software package, Microsoft Security Essentials. It’s honest-to-goodness anti-virus, anti-spyware, anti-bad-stuff software that offers real-time protection. It would be pretty easy to make some sort of joke about Microsoft making business for itself, producing operating systems that are open to malicious attack with one hand and selling software to protect yourself from it with the other. But MSE is free, as in no dollars and zero cents free. Free to download, free to use, free updates, free free.
This, of course, means jack-all if the software is crap. Fortunately, it is not crap. In fact, it’s quite good. The fine folks at Ars Technica have a first-look that is favorable, but I’ve been using the beta myself for a couple months on both Windows 7 and Windows Vista PCs so I thought I would offer my two cents.
First, it’s reasonably lean. On my 64-bit system, it generally uses less than 100MB of RAM (usually more like 70MB). That’s not the leanest background app around, but it’s not the worst offender, either. Windows Defender gets disabled (MSE is a superset of the Windows Defender stuff) so those system resources get freed up, which offsets the “cost” of MSE.
Second, it stays out of the way of my other programs. I haven’t noticed any change in system performance. It doesn’t screw up any of my games. I get the same firewall permission prompt with new games I always get in Windows, but that’s it. It doesn’t seem to run scans while I’m doing other system-intensive stuff. After a couple months of running this thing, I really can’t tell the difference between it being there and not being there, unless it catches something. Which is good.
Third, it appears to work. New virus and other malware definitions are updated practically every day. Windows Update will deliver them, and of course you can update by hand. I purposely downloaded a couple keygens and other programs from torrent sites that people said were infected, and MSE did indeed detect the bad stuff and prompt me to clean it. Cleaning the infected file (usually deleting it, sometimes quarantining it) is generally a one-click affair.
For now, I see no reason not to choose Microsoft Security Essentials as a free anti-spyware alternative. Many of the pay antivirus packages offer all kinds of extra features, like rootkit removals and more advanced firewalls and anti-email phishing stuff and all. If you want that stuff, go get AVG or something. But compared to products like AVG Free, MSE seems to stack up just fine. Frankly, if you don’t go around clicking on things you know you have no business clicking on, and if you keep up to date with your Windows Updates, you probably don’t need more protection than the free packages offer.
Of course, the real security firms will test the software against hundreds or thousands of known threats and get a really detailed take on how well it protects you. Maybe against that sort of testing, it’ll turn out to be crap. But hey, it’s free and so far, I like it. So if you’re not running any sort of anti-malware other than the basic Windows Defender that comes in Vista or Windows 7, go ahead and give this a whirl.
Now, if Microsoft really wanted to secure Windows, they’d work a deal with Adobe to offer updates to Flash through Windows Update. Not to distribute it in the first place, but if someone has it installed, they’d get updates that way. Flash is on like 95% of all desktop and notebook computers and it’s just chock full of potential attack vectors for malware. Adobe keeps closing the holes, but nobody ever updates their Flash software. I know Microsoft is all about positioning Silverlight against Flash and Adobe Air, and that’s all well and good. But I don’t see how providing updates to people who already have the software will really change that, and it’ll make Windows a gazillion times more secure.
